From the North Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty we bring you the best milk, cheese and meat. Traditional responsible and ethical farming means free range access to grazing with all feed, including hay from our own ancient meadows, GM and chemical-free and blended by us.We know the name and personality of every single member of our pedigree herd of happy healthy goats. We love - and thoroughly spoil – every one of them, male and female alike.

Thursday, 9 March 2017

I now declare the kidding season officially open!

Over the past month there have been many trials and tribulations .. but, as usual, we got through it and the kidding season has now officially begun!

As happened last year, the Gracie Moos beat the goats to it again as our oldest and (in my opinion) loveliest Gracie quietly gave birth to a beautiful little bull calf. All by herself with no fuss and bother .. he was there all clean and ready as we arrived to start morning milking yesterday morning.

He's a stocky little chap and is happy with all the attention he is getting from mum and all his aunties. Shouldn't be too long before he is joined by a few more little people.

Meanwhile, David spent a busy few days mucking out the goat barn and moving gates around to put everything into kidding mode. There are a lot of very large goaties around at the moment ... here's Poppy and Pippi looking slightly rotund ..

But our main contender for the Dolly Parton Award 2017 was our dear Shares who was sporting rather a large udder yesterday evening:

Due to kid today, she looked absolutely nowhere near this morning. But early this afternoon as David walked into the barn to investigate a strange growling noise, he found Shares fighting a crowd of goats who were all eager to see the first new baby of the season!

And here she is ..

Every year I just marvel at how tiny and perfect the new babies are .. Just gorgeous! Our first baby looks strong and healthy and hopefully there will be many more to follow. It remains to be seen how mummy Shares copes this year .. regular followers may remember that we had to leave her two boys with her permanently last year as she kept on jumping gates to get to them!

Next week promises to be a hugely busy week with many girls due to have their babies .. My little caravan is cleaned and ready for habitation as I prepare to spend the next couple of months sleeping (I use the word very loosely!) outside the barn.

I will do my very best to keep the blog and twitter updated with all those new arrivals, so watch this space!